Smoking Up Bloody Ashes
by stormsandsins
Summary: Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here everyday. You learn to live like an animal... And when you're high you never ever want to come down.


**Author's Notes: **Having never experienced a high, I... improvised. Happy reading!

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_Welcome to the jungle__  
__It gets worse here ev'ryday__  
__Ya learn ta live like an animal_

She stares dazedly past the window. He thinks that perhaps this isn't her first time. No, he decides, as he watches her push the end of the fag past her dry lips. The chapped and raised parts of her lips look like very thin leaves of paper, and he thinks maybe one day he could write on them, do whatever he wants with them.

Draco doesn't really know how he ended up with Parkinson. Hell, he doesn't know how he ended up here, of all places. It smells like pot and all kinds of fumes he's not really sure he's ever smelled before. He may have been drugged by Trelawney with her candles and liquid waxes and aromatic herbs without even knowing it.

Well, good. What he's smoking now isn't too bad.

Him and Pansy are exchanging the joint, and it just feels good to let go for once, not care about what everybody else may think of him or his family and what they're known for. Or whatever the world might say if they learned about Draco's fortunate run-in with Parkinson's Muggle drug stash. She's a mystery, she is. Hiding all this stuff and claiming to whoever wants to listen that she's pure, untainted by all things Muggle... What would her father say? What would _his_ parents say?

Did he care? Draco didn't know.

"He's an arsehole," she drawls, voice thick with smoke and all the shite that's getting in his lungs as well. But it feels too good and he's not about to stop inhaling it because right now doesn't seem a good time to stop forgetting. Oh, no. No no no. Not yet. Not when Saint Potter's about this close to finding him and ... Christ, he doesn't want to think about that. He's a dead wizard walking, that's what he is. Nevermind the fact that he betrayed the Dark Lord, the Chosen One would find fault in his past allegiances, the fact that he was on the wrong side for so long. "The lot of them, they just keep pissing their pants but they wanna believe they're higher."

She laughs hoarsely, and it sounds somewhat like a giggle, so far away but ... but he's still hearing her. She leans down over him, her short ebony locks falling around and framing her face and her nose doesn't look ugly right about now. She looks ... different. Draco takes a long, deep puff and hands her the fag, tendrils of smoke curling into her face ... but it's not really burning. After all, he's been through flames and they lick you so harsh you just want to feel ice-cold forever. Parkinson takes it like it's gold, Galleons and Galleons of gold, but he suspects it cost her Muggle money to get the joint because ... wizards don't make that kind of shite. Destructive shite, yeah, just as well, but not this simple and natural. 'Cause, 'cause it's grass, it's weed, isn't it? Or he doesn't know. He'd have to ask.

"Let me tell you something, Draco, we are higher. We are soaring. My father could fling his prick around every goddamn prostitute in the Death Eater club, he'd take it up the arse gladly and he still wouldn't be flying as high as me."

Draco breathes in her exhalation and he feels it sizzling in him, but so cool. "I never knew you to be so wordy, PeePee," he muses, seeing her in a haze. The smoke, perhaps? He has no clue.

She scrunches up her nose, it's pug-like again, and pulls the joint away from him when he tries to take it. "Prat." Then she smirks. "The worst is my mum's blind. Poor bitch. War made her a maniac."

Ashes. Draco saw ashes when war exploded like a fucking bomb.

Draco looks down his chest and sees the ashes that Parkinson dropped on his pale skin. He sees it reddening even as they're cooling.

War made Mother blind.

Parkinson hands him the fag, which has grown much shorter since they started. He needs the last drag like fucking air. He's choking round the O2 or whatever Hermione said affected the Tranquilising potion in sixth year. He can't remember if it's an exponent or what. Parkinson's rising from his chest and suddenly he's choking.

War made him see clearer.

Parkinson's rising and then she's around him, and she's taking the fag from his mouth and takes the last drag as she takes him, rides him, and he's not quite sure the smoke hasn't pierced through his brain because it's in him now and he doesn't really care but it's there. It's foggy around them and then she's crying out, her fucking luscious breasts in his hands, but there's no sound as he tries to breathe. He thinks perhaps the smoke swallowed it whole but then, really, since when does smoke swallow? Someonetold him once, long ago, that it's a poor trick in Muggle magic tricks, the magician's swallowed whole by the smoke and he disappears but it's not true Draco, it's just a trick. And perhaps smoke swallows more than people. He's seen that happen with too many, saw them disappear and it left a sick, hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, as though the world had lost its innocence. He realised then that it was a big mistake. None of it made any fucking sense, and why had he taken part in it?

War made him ...

War made him ...

They're spreading round and round. Draco clenches his eyes shut and moves, wanting not to care, but suffocating on the endless memories. He wants to forget, he wants to never remember the doom, the despair, the deaths. They move, their bodies move, and with them the ashes move on the bedspread. She kisses him and Draco is reminded of smoke again. Swirling, intoxicating smoke. And he's choking but he likes the feeling. Likes the feeling of nothing but the air getting thicker in his lungs.

... One last fuck and he's numb.

_And when you're high you never__  
__Ever want to come down_

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**End Notes:** I _love_ Guns'n'Roses, and while I _hate_ songfics, I thought, why the hell not. Let's not make it too obvious a songfic. I posted this on my journal two or three years ago, (yes, it's that old! I was what, 17-18...) and this girl commented saying how it's such a perfect song for the subject of drugs because the summer _Welcome to the Jungle_ came out (in 1987, the year I was born, coincidentally), everyone was doping up on that song, saying how the world was insane and they were evading it.

So, all in all, I never even thought other people would have doped up on _Welcome_, but I personally thought it was a perfect song for what I was doing with this fic. Cool, huh?

Let me know what you think, eh?


End file.
